The aggrieved bidder in the fight for the control of the Mangaung African Cultural Festival (Macufe) has argued in the High Court in Bloemfontein in the Free State that the tender awarded to C-Squared was fraudulent.
DS Consortium wants the High Court to nullify a multi-million contract between the department and C-Squared.
Senior counsel, Joubert Zietsman representing DS Consortium, told the court on Monday that the government cannot change the specifications of the tender after it was issued.
Zietsman also questioned the change of the venue for the Macufe event, and that the C-Squared did not have an appointment letter to host the event.
He says, “It is not sensible that C-Sqaud’s bid was not an acceptable tender and this was disqualified right at the outset. The answer that the first respondent gives and the second respondent doesn’t bid that either is at paragraph 49 on page 18 of the of answering affidavit.”
‘No malice’
The Free State Arts and Culture Department insists that there was no malice in the awarding of Macufe’s event management contract.
The department’s legal representative, Advocate Lungile Bomela, has dismissed allegations that the bidding process was designed to favour C-Squared.
Bomela says, “So you go there, you are assessed in terms of the criteria, you win once you win. You go to the table with the winning one and then you start negotiating and there’s nothing wrong with that. So what they referred to as the change of specifications is what happens post the winning. It has never happened. So that basically is the point. So there was no question of changing of specifications pre-winning.”
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